The Merchant Of Venice And The King James Version Of The...

Ambition and Prudence Ambition is defined as a strong desire to achieve success. However, having ambition is not always enough to achieve desired success. Surprisingly, the secret to success is the combination of prudence and ambition. Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, and the King James Version of the Bible supply examples where characters’ success is based on their ambition and their prudence. Ambition must be tempered with prudence in order to achieve any sort of good result; sole ambition leads one to failure and/or destruction. In the Merchant of Venice and the Bible Bassanio, Eve, and Jacob are able to mix their ambition with prudence and as a result are successful in their endeavors. However, in contrast, in the Merchant of Venice and Frankenstein, Shylock and Victor are not able to abate their ambition with prudence and consequently have undesirable endings. In the Merchant of Venice, Bassanio’s success is because of his forethought and his shrewdness. Bassanio first appears asking his good friend Antonio for money to woo the beautiful Portia; he complains, â€Å"O my Antonio, had I but the means/ to hold a rival place with one of them, / I have a mind presages me such thrift/ that I should questionless be fortunate,† (1.1.180-184). Earlier Bassanio admits that he â€Å"owes [Antonio] much† (1.1.154), which reveals that Bassanio likes to have a lavish life but is unable to actually pay for it. This leads to him having to borrow money from AntonioShow MoreRelatedHow to Read Lit Like a Prof Notes3608 Words   |  15 Pagespattern, either in plot or theme or both. Examples: i. Hamlet: heroic character, revenge, indecision, melancholy nature ii. Henry IV—a young man who must grow up to become king, take on his responsibilities iii. Othello—jealousy iv. Merchant of Venice—justice vs. mercy v. King Lear—aging parent, greedy children, a wise fool 7. †¦Or the Bible a. Before the mid 20th century, writers could count on people being very familiar with Biblical stories, a common touchstone a writer can tap b. Common Biblical storiesRead MoreLangston Hughes Research Paper25309 Words   |  102 Pageslike his father had, he would write about the real-life experiences of black people. He was determined to write stories about Negroes, so true that people in faraway lands would read them. James Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902, to Carolina (Carrie) Mercer Langston and James (Jim) Nathaniel Hughes. Carrie, self-indulgent and easygoing, was an impulsive spendthrift, while Jim, intense and miserly, focused his energies on schemes to raise his status in the world. ExtremelyRead MoreA Picatrix Miscellany52019 Words   |  209 Pagescomprehensive of the grimoires, or handbooks of magic. The attribution to the Andalusian mathematician al-Majriti (or al-Madjriti) (d. ca. 1004-7) is considered pseudo-epigraphic. The Latin translation dates to 1256 and the court of Alphonso the Wise, king of Castille, and exerted a considerable influence on Western magic thereafter. It is said that much of Ficino’s astrological magic derives from the Picatrix (see I.P.Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, University of Chicago Press, 1987, p